HISTORY

After the capture of the city by the Catholic Monarchs, the December 26, 1489, Almería lived centuries of prosperity pauper. Being the sixteenth century is the century of retreat and abandonment of the city and the province. There were several factors that influenced this; first, Almería was away from any American trade route, pass by and saw all the riches from the new continent and brought activity. On the other hand they lavished in the last hundred years both earthquakes and attacks by Barbary pirates and Turks as Barbarossa (in the next century, they happen all of the English armada). The first diminished the population and the second the terrorized and forced to move inland.

Especially unfortunate was the earthquake of 1522, which destroyed the city almost completely and reduced the population to only 700 inhabitants who settled around the newly built Cathedral.

The Cathedral of Almeria is a great example of defensive building of the time. It was the first cathedral temple erected in 1496 under the orders of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza on the old mosque.

The earthquake completely destroyed and 1522 and was then when Fray Diego Fernandez de Villalán, Bishop of Almería, he built the current under the patronage of Our Lady of the Incarnation.His appearance gives clear military appearance; in fact, it is one of the only cathedral-fortress of its kind in Spain: solid buttresses, flanking towers, thick walls, lack of windows … The three new are of equal height which provides a wide roof that served for installation of guns and military surveillance, only embellish two austere Renaissance covers of Juan de Orea, and on the wall facing the street Cube, the Sol de Portocarrero (Another symbol of the city that although it is believed to reference bishop Portocarrero, the seventeenth century, he was carved from the early days of the cathedral) However, bívedas and sacristy are splendid, Gothic and Renaissance the first second. The temple contains works by Alonso Cano, Murillo and Ribera and San Indalecio of santoral Salzillo.El in Almeria is rich in legends. The above San Indalecio is the landlord of the city and its wreckage came to rest to Almeria after centuries in the abbey of San Juan de la Peña, in Huesca. San Indalecio was one of the Seven Apostolic Men, evangelists Andalucia who according to old traditions collected in mozarabes writings, accompanied James the Greater in the evangelization of southern Spain in the mid-s I A.D.